Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told a gathering in Bermuda last night of the "pain'' the "mess in Kosovo'' had caused him.

Premier Jennifer Smith welcomed Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Kissinger, a top foreign policy advisor of several US Presidents, to an international conference of world insolvency chiefs held at the Marriott Castle Harbour.

The INSOL Conference of the Americas brought 300 lawyers, accountants, judges and finance professionals to Bermuda from 23 countries including the US, Canada, the UK, Poland, Australia, Brazil and South Africa.

The meeting's Bermuda chairperson Dianna Kempe said this year's conference -- which officially kicked off last night -- was the first ever to be held "offshore'' outside the US.

Dr. Kissinger told the gathering he believed the NATO strikes on Kosovo were causing more suffering than any other possible route that could have been taken -- with latest estimates of Albanian refugees at 1.5 million.

But he said US president Bill Clinton was in an impossible situation as he could not back down now since the US and NATO's credibility were at stake.

And the shocking brutality of the Serbs against Albanians had heightened to "intolerable levels'' which could not be condoned, although the two had fought for many years.

NATO should have set more limited objectives like maintaining a cease-fire, sending in unarmed inspectors and working toward autonomy to confine the conflict so the strikes would never have started, he said.

"There are some problems you can only mitigate, you cannot solve totally.

Sometimes the best you can do is to push a thing ahead of you and keep it from blowing up. But now that we're in it it's a totally different issue.

"First what the Serbs have done is too brutal to be permitted and secondly we have now involved the credibility of the US and of NATO.

"Six hundred million plus NATO people and 900 airplanes running around unopposed -- which I tell you the truth gives me great pain -- since the Serbs were our allies in two wars.

"But if we can't win now, rogue countries all over the world are going to feel they don't need to take us seriously.'' Kissinger weighs in on Kosovo crisis He said continued US involvment in such conflicts would eventually become extremely "draining'' on the nation and every solution sought was "an admission ticket to another set of problems''.

Dr. Kissinger recalled the day before the strikes began president Clinton said he wanted to bring the "kind of ethnic co-existence'' the US had achieved to Kosovo and to "do away with the hatred''.

"But that is something that cannot happen in the Balkans very quickly. I was extremely critical of the diplomacy that got us into this conflict.

"I think a terrible mistake was made in letting NATO demand of a country with which we were not at war that we had a right to put NATO troops on its soil and occupy it. I don't know where we got this idea.'' More on Kosovo, see Overseas Pages 7 and 8